Media examination of conscience…sort of

A few days ago, on a Washington Post forum, Bret Baier, Chief Political Anchor at Fox News and Judy Woodruff, Anchor and Managing Editor of the PBS NewsHour, discussed the challenges of reporting the news in an increasingly polarized political environment.

While they still show that the media professionals are insufficiently self aware of their culpability for what has happened to public trust in what they do, there is some sign that the scales may be dropping for their eyes.

The elephant in the room which they fail to address, and which is at the heart of the distrust in relation to their reporting on this presidential administration, is their inate hostility to the man in the White House. Their distaste for the man, his manners and – for many of them – the conservative values they think he stands for, is seen by the public as colouring everything they write about “all his works…and all his pomps”.